[Python-Dev] ImportError message suggestion

[Matt Giuca]

> ImportError: cannot import name annotate from /usr/<snip>/image.pyc


That could be handy.

Not sure it's necessary, however, and exposes some system information in the
error message. I can imagine a web app which prints out exception messages,
and this would mean the server file structure is printed to the world
(though arguably you should not be doing this on your web app, I work on an
open source web app and we do dump tracebacks to our users sometimes --
because it's open source we don't mind them seeing the code -- but we'd
rather not have them see our server details).

If you do get this issue (as a developer), I find the built-in help()
function very handy -- you can import a module then go help(that_module) and
it tells you the absolute path to the module. That might be a sufficient
alternative to this patch (though requiring a bit more manual labour).

So I am neither for nor against this suggestion.

"I think the acceptance for this wouldn't be that hard since there is
> no real issue for regression (the only one I could think of is for
> doctest module, although I'm not sure there are any reason to test for
> failed import in doctest)"


I agree. (I'm more familiar with unittest than doctest, where you'd just use
assertRaises(ImportError, ...) and not care what the exception message is --
is there any way in doctest to check for the exception type without caring
about the message?)

I can't write the C code myself, or evaluate the patch.
>

Go to http://bugs.python.org/ and add a new issue. Upload the patch as an
attachment when you enter the issue description. I think you'll have to put
it down as a feature request for 2.7/3.1, since the beta tomorrow will mean
no more features in 2.6/3.0.

Matt
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